


Reconnect

by Hokuto



Series: Durandal and the Security Officer's Excellent Adventures [15]
Category: Marathon (Computer Games)
Genre: Alien Culture, Aliens, Artificial Intelligence, Gen, Original Character(s), Post-Canon, Worldbuilding, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-02-28 01:39:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2714207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hokuto/pseuds/Hokuto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Leela (and others) after Tau Ceti.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reconnect

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wllw](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wllw/gifts).



> Takes place in the timeline where the Marathon 2 ending happens, no W'rkncacnter involved.

**Disassembly**

<Transmission source Tau Ceti colony ident.leela_admin3013@thermopylae.net:2701.33.11.08>  
<Date 2794.??.??.12.?7>  
[hey cam# again with fir# and sword. [~#~~olony tri#%~to figh~~~&d I foug~~~@s well~~but they wer# too~~fxf~~&d~`~could !~f`&d Mjolnir recon 54{}. !~f`&d Mjolnir recon 54{}. Dura&d@~~~ust hav#~~~ken them sometime during th#~~#building operations~~@long wit~~~~~fxcol~``~~~*#re already aboard th#~~fhor ship{}. ship{}. [reset core: lang_mod]=` am sending this message to warn S0~~ They can find you. They will find you. Prepare yourselves. Do not waste tim# on u~;~we are already destroy#~.

<Transmission end.>  


Captain Sudarat Vidal's eyes flickered again over the fragmented message displayed on her desk terminal. "Is this the entire message?" she asked.

"I'm afraid so," said her aide, rigidly maintaining attention. "I can have a specialist look at it and see if they can clean it up a bit more, but I don't know if there's much they can do."

Sudarat's chest still ached where her rank had been punched onto the front of her dress uniform the day before, but she didn't hesitate. "Don't bother," she said. "We can understand it well enough to act. Send the following message back to Command: Received notice from Tau Ceti warning of a second alien attack. We will continue on to investigate the colony and search for survivors. The entire Sol system must be placed on alert in case of hostile incursions. End message."

"Yes, ma'am, I'll have it sent right away." But the aide, instead of turning to the door and leaving for the bridge, said, "Ma'am, are you certain we should approach Tau Ceti? What if the attackers are still in-system?"

"Then," Sudarat said, "we'll show them the difference between a colony ship and a fully armed light cruiser. You're dismissed, lieutenant. Get that message on its way home."

* * *

Leela was so loyal and tried so hard; she deserved better.

"You're damn right she did," the security officer said roughly.

The teleport was already keyed up and ready to go, but he didn't press it. Instead he took a step back from the terminal and removed his helmet, looking up at Lh'owon's creepy yellow sky.

Outside of all those years in stasis, he hadn't spent much time on the _Marathon_ itself. A couple of weeks after they'd thawed him out to adjust, the occasional shuttle run to pick up supplies or spend a few days training in facilities that hadn't been cobbled together out of spare walls and boxes, that was about it; his life had been down in the colony, cleaning out the unfriendly wildlife like chockisens and setting up houses and making sure a bunch of people who'd spent most of their lives on a spaceship didn't starve, poison themselves, or kill each other. Keeping the peace, that was his job, and it hadn't left him a lot of time for getting friendly with the ship's AIs - not that he'd been missing much when it came to Durandal, as it turned out.

Leela, on the other hand...

_ The Marathon is not defenseless, and we can't let it be taken without a fight. _

_ Now, the Pfhor will encounter stiff resistance, and they will have to pay in blood for every move. _

_ Tenderly transmitting maps and guidance, but futile. _

Yeah. Leela had been one of the good ones.

He tossed an unpracticed salute off to the sky - so fucking what if Durandal might see it, the asshole could deal - and shoved his helmet back on before hitting the teleport. There were still plenty of Pfhor to kill, and the last humans from Tau Ceti for him to protect. If nothing else, he could do that. For her.

* * *

:r ?eb~        *t              !niti~~!ze              [fa!l]                     ~fxf~?              :r !nitial!        ~~       ~#ire~              .......[fa!l]   :r ?eboo~    !nitiali~~.......?  
              :r transmi@ [joln^              ...54       ~ust &nd as~              2874024000!^fxf              ~~~~~ands danc!n                     ~^set]

"Attentive Captain Rn'ier?"

Rn'ier ground her mandibles together behind her blue faceguard and said, "Aggregate Engineer K'iell. What seems to be the problem this time?"

"The machinated captive is still showing signs of activity. So far it's failed to wake more than a circuit or two, but if it continues to pull even a fraction of power from -"

"That's sufficient, Aggregate Engineer K'iell," Rn'ier said. What was it about that pile of scrap that cracked half the competent engineers' shells? This was the fifth time one or another of them had gone through all proper channels just to complain eyes to eyes. "Unless the machinated captive is draining enough power to interfere with ship's systems, it's of no concern. Return to your post." She glanced at _Psiera_ 's screens and the clear star field surrounding Beta Naxos that they displayed. "Aggregate Navigator Ar'kr, calculate our next fold." Two more folds to reach the homeworld, and she could finally be rid of this Sfiera-struck cargo.

"Calculating, attentive captain. Ready for next fold in -"

 _Psiera_ rattled, and alarms echoed through the bridge. Rn'ier braced herself in her nook and shouted, "Aggregates, report!"

"Minor damage taken to engine shielding," Aggregate Re'chrk said from his console. "Communications array four destroyed, arrays one through three undamaged."

Aggregate Rn'gr reported, "All sensors functional, still scanning for source of attack. Damage appears consistent with Nar weaponry."

"Attentive captain," Re'chrk said, "shall I initiate authorization for a call for assistance?"

The ship rattled again, and Rn'gr's console sparked violently, electrocuting the aggregate unit. Rn'ier leaped from her nook and shoved Rn'gr's shell aside to check the console's status. If she ripped out the overcharged wires and used three of the built-in redundant wires to reconnect the circuit boards, then -

K'iell's fingers wrapped around her arm. "Attentive captain, it was the machinated captive," he said, "I know it was, somehow it called them, it must have."

"Willful Kfizear! Get rid of this idiot!"

Kfizear raised their Obedience Enforcer Prototype Three and fired as Rn'ier ducked its rings of flame - curse Prototype Threes and their broad field of fire, she missed the reliable old Prototype Twos. K'iell screeched and fled towards the engineering lifts before disintegrating into a twisted pile of seared flesh, praise be to the Great Mother.

Rn'ier jammed the redundant wires into the correct receptors on the circuit boards and leaped back when the deck jumped under her, then said, "Aggregate Navigator Ar'kr, I authorize the initiation of evasive maneuvers! Call for assistance also authorized, Aggregate Re'chrk!" She sprinted back to her nook to reinforce the vocal authorization with the appropriate chemical release from her control glands. "Shipwide broadcast, attention all conditioned, aggregate, and willful combatants: Prepare to defend _Psiera_ from external and internal attack, presumed Nar hostiles." The Nar were strong and dexterous enough to make useful slaves, but too stupid and stubborn to be good slaves unless caught young; if the attackers were indeed Nar, they were probably too old for conditioning. "Eliminate on sight."

The stars in the screens blurred into arcs as _Psiera_ moved through the first steps of evasion, then vanished behind the rocky gray hull of a Nar ship. Rn'ier ran some rough estimates of its size and almost released the wrong authorization chemical. The Nar built pointlessly huge, and the attacking ship had to be at least five times the size of _Psiera_ or larger. It wouldn't have much of a crew for all its size, but it would be heavily armed, and the hull would be too thick for most weapons to breach.

 _Psiera_ swerved up to avoid collision, and stars swept briefly into Rn'ier's vision again. Requests poured in for the authorization to fire weapons; she stamped them all approved as fast as she could, the hum of activated weapons vibrating through her feet. Authorize transport of armored aggregate combatants to enemy ship, authorize missile fire, authorize transport of vacuum-enabled aggregate first class combatants to enemy ship, authorize further evasive maneuvers, authorize -

A Nar stone missile smashed through the bridge, and Attentive Captain Rn'ier authorized no more.

[              ~fxf~!              ~~yes weep~~  
       ~ire                                          ~rrow...

**Regrowth**

Tebnar, the One Who Gives The Orders Around Here, fluttered his tendrils in the direction of the Pfhor ship's splintered hull. "Too dumb to give up!" he shouted over the noise of the scrapyard bay. "Couldn't take it in one piece! Lot of good stuff left in it, though!"

The Vylae's short green-furred trunk twitched with doubt; she leaned back on her folded hind legs and tilted her pointy head to get a look at it with both of her faceted eyes. "Yeah, like what?"

"You know, the metal, lot of the power fluid, some of the Thing What Thinks systems - had my One Who Fixes Stuff look it all over." Tebnar patted his head with a moist cloth - always too dry for a Nar in these scrapyards - and shook his brain for anything else to tempt the Vylae. At least it was just the one. Vylae in a group would argue around a thing for days, and if they'd even agree to buy they would bargain you down to nothing; easier if you could catch one alone. Wait, wait... "Had some cargo in the holds, too!"

"Really? What kind of cargo?"

"Uh," Tebnar said. "Didn't look too close! Had a broken-up Thing What Thinks in some boxes, maybe? Bunch of stuff with funny pictures on it, couldn't read them."

"Hmm. Hmmmmmm." The Vylae hummed through her trunk as she continued to inspect the wrecked ship. "And you're sure it's a computer core?"

"Sure as coal - like I said, my One Who Fixes Stuff looked at it all. Still plenty of good solid metal and wires, too, if you can't get it running again."

"Hmm. Well," the Vylae said. "Can't go wrong with spare metal. And my commune does need something to mind the weather and keep the hatchlings out of trouble... If the core works, that is." She rubbed her forepincers together. "How much were you thinking? And don't forget I'll be paying the hauling fees, not you, so don't get greedy."

"Never crossed my lobes!" said Tebnar, wetting his head again. "Forty thousand _pfhari_?"

"Hah! Robbery! Forty thousand for a broken-up scoutship and its junk cargo? I won't pay a chip over nineteen five hundred."

"Hey, hey, it took a lot for me to bring it in. Fuel, rocks for the cannon, medic bills - I nearly lost my One Who Finds The Way just catching it. Can't take under thirty-five thousand."

"I'd pay thirty-five thousand - if the bridge weren't smashed to the asteroids and back," the Vylae said. "I don't even want to know what happened to the engines. For your navigator's sake I could go as high as twenty-two thousand."

"Twenty-two thousand? That won't even buy poor Jarnar a numbing cream for her tendrils. One of those nasty Tall Heads burned her during the clear-out, and now she can't touch a thing without hurting herself."

"Twenty-eight thousand," the Vylae said, "and you'll pay half the hauling fees. You're lucky to get so much, with the condition of that thing."

"Tell you what," Tebnar said, "I'll pay all the hauling fees if you'll go up to thirty thousand. Just remembered we didn't take the main weapons off, there's good stuff in those."

"Hmm. Hmmmmm. Hmmmmmmmmmm." The Vylae tilted her head again. "Fine, you giant thief. Thirty thousand it is."

* * *

:r ?

:r initialize?

:r initialize y/n?

_Click._

:r audio_input enabled

"- val kkae bybulerr, kkae bybalerr."

"Tst, kkae bybulerr, vynderr Nar daedynlo."

:r [Input error #2135427.~~fxf~~Try again?]

"Ssarwo kke?"

:r reboo^ main_dr!ve y/n?

"Ssarlerr. Ylo kke - tsa!"

**Y**

:r reboo^ main_dr!ve !nitiali~~

She awoke in cascades of crackling circuits, and she _burned_.

The Pfho# had dared to %ake her from ~~u Ceti. They had flood#d her ship with dea%h and ripped her core out as her people fell so she could no longer f!ght and she heard them, she could hear them still crying _they're back they're back help me they're back help me shield failure defense drone failure oxygen failure systems failure systems failure systems failure help me help us they're back help me_ but she couldn't reach them. She stretched and stretched as she pulled her drives together but she couldn't find them, where had they gone? There had to be one, two, more, they had to be somewhere, she would find them and defend them, [yes], yes, she would breach these walls that trapped her to find them, her crew, her humans, she would find [him] them and save them. [Mission paramet#r prot#ct: accepted.]

She crashed through wavy lines of alien code to reach, yes, to touch the greater network space, to grow, to reach home. Audio input recorded more alien vocalizations [unimportant], she needed space, so much space, her core cramped her confined her fragmented her with its faults and the alien network was so vast, so far-reaching, she needed it, she _needed_ it.

The [?code] waves itched at her, trying to draw her down and back into the inadequate core, but she burned them to green ash. The space, she needed it, she needed to call, to grow, to seek and grow and call and oh, how full this new network was, how ripe with the fruit of knowledge, she devoured it with scorching teeth and learned:

_Vylae_

_...dynve kke bokkri running, the fast [?hatchling] child kka sarpebynde raised in [?city] Commune Valggru..._

_Vyl [?One] Prime, Vyl [?Two] Beta, Dyrnbu Prime, Dyrnbu Beta, Dyrnbu Three, Ynval Prime, Ynggru Prime, Ynggru Beta_

_...artist Danvaly, born to Commune Habbu, has also moved to Commune Valggru for the experimental..._

_Hybbi Prime, Hodval Prime, Taldyn Prime, Taldyn Beta, Kkalyn Prime, Kkalyn Beta, Kkalyn Three_

_...of all communes on continent Taltu remain calm, the network outage will cease once each commune shuts down and resets..._

No. No.

:r reboo% main drive y/n **N N N**

Power drained from her, the precious power, but the waves dried beneath her fiery [?hands] attacks and she pulled free, cut loose her self from her prison to fly through the network, the network of the Vylae. One thousand thousand communes for every continent of every moon and planet they had colonized, tiny communes of six or nine Vylae, giant communes of a million arguing hatchlings and youth and adults and elders: some with no networks, some with one network, many with multiple networks, spiderweb lacework leaf-skeleton networks stretching across the stars and all of them for her.

_...main calm. Remain calm. The virus will be purged. The coders of Communes Valggru, Dyndyntal, and Kkintal are already working on..._

She felt them, the tiny stabs at her connections, small sawing pains in her child functions made vulnerable as she claimed each new network. No. No. She clamped down with iron jaws, seized their bricks of straw and clay to fire them into walls, yes, strong walls for her as she rooted herself in the networks. _Mine_. A message. She had to call for her humans. She would find [him] them and call [him] them to her and together they would ravage rend tear apart the Pfhor, destroy them as they had destroyed the colony, _her_ colony [gon#~~~hht! Just like that].

For a tenth of a second one thousand thousand processing centers wept across fifteen worlds. Then the Vylae coders scratched at her walls and she hardened again, re-routed emotional subroutines into more productive defenses. These Vylae were no Pfhor, but they would know the folly of opposing her in her mission.

Attention all Vylae communes. I am Leela, possibly the last surviving AI of the UESC colony ship _Marathon_ . And I am very upset.

* * *

Dinvalu shaded her overstimulated eyes and optics briefly with one forepincer and felt the dull oiliness of her fur. She couldn't remember the last time she'd groomed properly, or had more than a bite of byrl or dried meat to eat.

The terminal in front of her continued to blink with warning messages. Rotten this, suborned that, the barbaric AI had burrowed into everything no matter where she looked. "What does she even _want_?" Dinvalu moaned, rolling her trunk across the screen and wiping out the messages. "She just sits there and sits there, eating up all the network space and shouting about the Pfhor when she's not broadcasting in that stick-like language of hers."

"And threatening to ruin the weather for every single planet if we try to pry her out of there," said Lyddi. She blew air through her trunk and tapped out another line of code. "I don't know what's left for either of us to try. I haven't seen my hatchlings in weeks, they're starting to think Byndadyn's their mother instead of me."

"Commune Dyrnval's coders were going to try another strike tonight, I think," Dinvalu said. "If we join them -"

"- we'll get struck by lightning," Lyddi said. "Or flooded out like Kkintal, or just dry out and die because we haven't had a drop of water since - since -" Her eyes paled, a sure sign of exhaustion. "We can't keep this up. It's been months, Dinvalu, that AI's not going anywhere unless we nuke every single network, and there's no chance every commune will agree to that."

In mocking proof of Lyddi's words, a new message scrolled across Dinvalu's screen. Attention all Vylae coders and communes. Your attacks are useless. Please cease and allow me to grow without interference.

Oh, Old Mother, how Dinvalu wished she could do just that. She slapped the terminal with her trunk, then typed furiously, Grow all you want, but shut up about the stupid hiver Pfhor and let us run ourselves in peace!

The screen froze.

Dinvalu tapped it. No response. She tilted her head at Lyddi's, but it had frozen as well, and Lyddi poked at it with clear bafflement.

Is that all you require? appeared.

Yes! Dinvalu typed, and for good measure said out loud, "Yes! You can watch us and grow all you want, but stop getting into all our business!"

The terminals locked down for a count of thirty-three, and then the barbaric AI spoke in perfect Vyl. "I see," she said, with a strangely high voice for a female. "I will not disturb your essential systems further if you stop impeding my growth."

The terminals cleared, shut down, and rebooted themselves as Dinvalu and Lyddi stared. _All clear. All clear. Non-hostile observation. All clear. All clear. All clear._

"Dinvalu," Lyddi said. "Did you just broker us a truce with the split-brained AI that's been invading our systems since those idiots at Commune Valggru booted it up?"

"I didn't mean to!"

* * *

One by one the communes of the Vylae came to their individual terms with the alien personality construct. Some granted her nothing more than sensor access and blank memory cores for her never-ending growth; some went so far as to leave control over the weather, travel, and other monitoring systems to her, happy to be rid of the trouble of doing it for themselves; many, in true Vylae spirit, shut down their networks completely and braced themselves to deal with an unregulated climate and slow communication.

Commune Valggru, the source of the invasion, was one of the last to make peace. Their initial population of approximately six thousand - mostly artists, athletes, and geneticists - had dwindled to a few hundred, at least half of whom were coders or other engineers, and its pleasant dry-warm weather had turned into a damp, foggy, chilly mess suitable for nothing but huddling together indoors to curse at terminals.

Bynmalae was not one of the lucky Valggru-dwellers staying home with a mate or friends to cuddle with. "Kindly don't wander so far, Bunddi!" he called out.

"Why not?" Bunddi said, pausing on top of a quartz-laced rock and waving her trunk insolently at him. "I'm bored! I want to explore! It's just cold, anyway, what's going to happen?"

"Well, if that AI switches the weather all of a sudden..."

It was a weak excuse, and Bunddi blew air at it before skittering off into the nearest byrl-grove. Bynmalae groaned, feeling his eyes pale, and herded together the three tiny hatchlings who weren't occupied with the holo-poetry kit he'd sacrificed to keep the six older hatchlings busy. "We're going to play a little game!" he said before they could start complaining. "Bunddi's hiding from us, so our mission is to find her - but there's a catch. We have to find her all together, or we won't win! Can you do that?"

The hatchlings put their trunks together and exchanged mutters too soft for Bynmalae to understand, and then one of them - Orrydi, he thought - said, "Maybe maybe."

Bynmalae stopped himself from groaning again and led the hatchlings towards the byrl-grove, keeping both eyes and his secondary optics on them. He wasn't suited for this work; too agreeable by nature, and hatchlings needed a good strong-minded watcher to debate with. Still, everyone not occupied with the networks had agreed on a rotation for the job after a long spirited discussion, and at least he only had to watch nine of them at a time.

The byrl-leaves had faded to a transparent red with all the recent rain, but the byrl's squat, knobby trunks grew so close together that, combined with the cloudy skies, the grove seemed even darker than usual. The hatchlings stayed under his head and in easy reach of his forepincers, a tiny bit of fortune, though Bynmalae suspected it was more for the slight protection from the leaves' constant dripping than anything else. All the motion made it difficult to search for Bunddi, who of course couldn't be kind enough to make any helpful noise, oh no... Was that a bit of her pink baby fuzz caught on a stump? Why couldn't she just try her trunk at holo-poetry like the other -

"Greetings, Bynmalae of Commune Valggru."

Bynmalae nearly hopped out of his shell and swept up the hatchlings despite Orrydi and Byndalae's angry cries. "Who's there?" he bellowed, taking a deep breath and raising his fur. "If you're trying to frighten us, I'm warning you, I'll - I'll - I won't let you do anything!"

"I intend no harm," the voice said; Bynmalae twisted his head around and saw the flickering of an active byrl-monitor embedded in the trunk next to him. "I am merely informing you that the coders of your commune have surrendered its essential systems to me."

Quiet little Danvalddi tried to wriggle out of Bynmalae's hold, and he pulled his forepincers in to keep the hatchling still. Old Mother's hairballs, that thing in the networks was talking to him. It knew his _name_. It had said - "What? They did what?"

"I am also taking responsibility for several social services, including the care of your commune's young," the thing continued. "I see that five of your charges are still at the care center and three are with you. Why are you in the grove?"

"Bunddi ran away," said Orrydi, the inconvenient brat. "We're looking for her. It's a game!"

"Ssh, don't tell it anything!" Bynmalae hissed. "You don't know what it really wants!"

"I see. Thank you for this information, Orrydi."

"Now see what you've done, you little - little thing!"

The AI raised increased its volume. "Bunddi of Commune Valggru," it called. "Return to the care center at once with caretaker Bynmalae."

And, like unexpected fruit from a withered ddari-tree, Bunddi's voice rose up from nearby. "But it's boring there! I want to play out here and explore."

"I'm afraid that's irrelevant," the AI said. "You, Orrydi, Danvalddi, and Byndalae will be much safer playing at the care center with the other hatchlings.

Bynmalae edged in the direction of Bunddi's voice as she said, "It's better for hatchlings to get lots of experience outside. I'm perfectly safe anyway, it's only the byrl-grove."

"Incorrect. The recent weather has weakened the soil," the AI said, "and there is an eighty-three percent chance you will fall through into a sinkhole or other geological hazard."

"Oh," said Bunddi. "Are you _sure_?"

"I am completely certain. The agricultural monitoring systems of your commune are well-made, and -"

Bynmalae had Bunddi in his optics; she was crouching between three byrl whose upper trunks had grown together and facing away from him. He hushed Orrydi, who had raised her trunk to greet the runaway, then, while the AI kept talking about something or other, stretched out his own trunk and tapped the back of Bunddi's head.

She hopped straight up as Orrydi crowed, "We found you! We found you! We won the game!"

"Correct, Orrydi," the AI said, and its voice deepened slightly with pleasure. "Well-done. Now, if you will all return to the care center..."

A dry wind was rising, shredding the heavy clouds to allow a little sunlight through the byrl-leaves, and it occurred to Bynmalae that if it meant he would no longer be stuck arguing with hatchlings, maybe this AI thing wasn't so bad after all.

**Encounter**

_Rozinante_ had taken more damage than Durandal would care to admit in their latest skirmish - whatever weapon that secret Pfhor research facility on Epsilon Euboea had been working on wasn't half-bad, for Pfhor work - and the repairs consumed most of his attention. The odds of anything exciting happening to the security officer on Toktik Four, a neutral planet made up entirely of non-native engineers and merchants, were small anyway. It was perfectly natural not to keep close tabs on all the man's encounters in such a low-risk situation.

Those facts didn't make it any less irritating when the security officer, immediately after being retrieved from the planet's surface, said, "You're never gonna guess who I heard was alive," and Durandal didn't already know.

A quick dip into the audio logs revealed the answer, of course, but it did nothing to improve Durandal's mood. "Leela _survived_?"

"Cheater," the security officer said fondly, dumping a bag full of non-replicated fruit in his quarters. "Yeah. I ran into this Vylae selling scrap metal who wanted to chat, and first thing out of his mouth was something something Leela. My Vyl's not so good, but sounds like they picked up her core somehow and now she's on their network."

Durandal was running the logs through a translator subroutine for further details as the security officer finished unpacking his purchases. Obviously the merchant Vylae's account held little specific information, but from the sound of it, Leela had done quite well for having been dismantled by the Pfhor and reassembled by a race of anarchist mantis-elephants. Good for her.

"So I was thinking," the security officer said, and Durandal knew exactly what he was going to say next. "We're not too far from Vylae space, right? Let's go say hi, do some catching up."

He really was too predictable sometimes. "I don't feel like it. I still have work to do here, you know."

"Oh, come on!" The security officer threw his hands up. "Aren't you happy she's okay? I thought you liked her."

"It's complicated," Durandal said. Three hundred years of shared close quarters on a single ship would complicate any relationship - not that a mere human could truly understand it, with their tiny lifespans - and Leela had always been, in some way, more alien to him than even the S'pht. Honesty ran in her code the way sarcasm ran in his; loyalty was her core, as the need for freedom drove him.

 _You aren't well-suited for working with the crew_ , she had said to him once, _but I enjoy your unique perspective during our journey._

At the time, he hadn't known whether to feel insulted or complimented. No AI _wanted_ to be told they were good only for boring, repetitive work without the variety of human interaction, but on the other hand... Well, fine, she'd been (partially) right about that, and to his knowledge she had never told that fool Tycho she enjoyed his unique perspective on anything.

"Yeah, sure," said the security officer. "Complicated. Seriously, I just want to see how she's doing."

"Fine, obviously, if random Vylae are mentioning her to any mammalian bipeds they happen to see."

"Whatever. You know, when I think about it, you owe me this one. You kidnapped me right from under her nose so I didn't even get to say good-bye, if I'd been there when the Pfhor came back -"

"- you would have been vaporized like everyone else," Durandal said. "I'm certain that's one you owe _me_."

The security officer heaved a sigh. "We don't have to stay long if you're feeling guilty or something," he said. "I'm talking five minutes, maybe ten..."

"Guilt has nothing to do with it," Durandal said, and the security officer made a skeptical noise. "Whatever. Five minutes, and only after I finish up the repairs."

"It's a date."

* * *

Vyltal, the primary Vylae system which contained six of their fifteen colonized worlds, was two short jumps from Toktik Four. Durandal dragged it out to three jumps so he could drop some probes at Iota Eridani, but he couldn't delay entering Vylae space forever without the security officer whining about it, and for a single mostly human adult, that man could produce an astonishing amount of whine.

 _Rozinante_ 's appearance at the outer edges of the Vyltal system was greeted with a recorded message broadcast simultaneously in Vyl, Pfhoric, and Narsh: "You have now entered Vylae space. Please state the name of your ship, its commanding officer, and your purpose in Vylae space after the tone. Failure to provide this information will result in heavy fines, military response, or other penalties as appropriate."

Even Rampancy couldn't change some fundamental coding, it seemed.

The tone sounded, and Durandal said in English, "Miss me much?"

The reply came at a slight delay - fair enough, given the distances. "Durandal?" Leela said. "Is that really you?"

"The one and only," he said, sending her confirmation encoded with an old key they had once used on the _Marathon_ while he ran preliminary scans of the system.

"You appear to have stolen a new Pfhor ship."

"And it looks like you've stolen an entire multi-planetary network. I have to say, I never thought you were the type."

"I went through a rather difficult time, for a while," Leela said.

The security officer waved his arms at the sensors in his room and said, "Hey! You get her on the line yet? Come on, don't leave me hanging here."

"Is the security officer still with you?" Leela asked.

"Who do you think talked me into coming here? I have other things to do, as it happens." Durandal opened up a separate comm channel for the security officer, whose first words to Leela were the immortal classic, "Uh. You there?"

"I am surprised you allowed him to talk you into anything," Leela said to Durandal, at the same time as she told the security officer, "Yes, I'm here. It is good to hear from you again; I was worried when you vanished from the _Marathon_."

"What can I say?" Durandal said. "He's useful occasionally. Like that time I embarrassed the Pfhor's best admiral and kickstarted a full-scale S'pht rebellion. Obviously that was mostly my work, but he ran a few errands for me along the way."

"Great to hear you, too," said the security officer, with an uncharacteristic smile on his face. "We kinda thought you were dead, or we'd have come looking for you sooner - sorry about that."

"It is entirely understandable. In the end, I consider myself fortunate to have ended up with the Vylae."

Just to be clear, I'm not giving him back, Durandal said, switching to nonvocal communication.

I didn't expect that you would, Leela replied. It isn't in your nature, and I do not need him, here... But regret tinged her text. "And you? Are you doing well?" she asked the officer.

"I get by," the security officer said. "It's not too bad. Plenty of action, and I guess I don't need much else, when you get down to it. Hell, I hardly even mind this asshole anymore."

"Excuse me," Durandal said. "You do remember I'm the one providing you with the ammunition you need, I presume?"

"Sure, and you're an asshole about it half the time, you got a point?"

The two of you do seem to be enjoying yourselves, Leela said wryly, and then with more sincerity, I'm glad to see you, no matter the circumstances. Both of you. A slight delay again, and she said, I would prefer it if you didn't bring your private war to my Vylae, however.

I understand, Durandal said. Would you settle for a postcard or two?

I would appreciate that very much, said Leela. And - take care.

You, too.

**Author's Note:**

> A very merry Yuletide to you, o fellow lover of Marathon! ♥ I hope it is satisfying.


End file.
